A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll reports that 76% of adults don’t believe their children’s generation will have a better life than they do, which is an all-time high. 7 out of 10 adults think the United States is on the wrong track, and 60% believe the country is in decline. 70% of American adults blame the current state of decline on government leaders in Washington. This nationwide frustration has dropped President Obama’s approval rating to 40%, while only 36% approve of his handling of foreign policy.

Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton was on the Fox Business network Wednesday when host Stuart Varney brought up the WSJ/NBC News poll and the “approval rating, or lack thereof, of [Obama’s] foreign policy.” Bolton responded:

Yeah, I’d like to know who those 36% are because the world’s descending into chaos. And I think this poll and the drop in approval numbers overall gives the lie to the conventional political wisdom that Americans don’t care about foreign policy, it’s too remote from their lives. I think the American people are much more sensible and practical than their political leaders and they see that because our economy here at home depends on a global economy that instability in Europe can have a profound effect.

Varney commented about how today’s short news cycle creates a headline that lasts for a day or two (maybe longer), and then “we expect it to go away.” He noted that many news events, particularly in Russia, are “just not going away.” Bolton pointed out that Putin had voiced his intentions eight years ago:

It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Look, Putin gave us strategic warning eight years ago when he said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century. That was a statement right then he intended to get Russian hegemony in the spaced of the former Soviet Union. That’s what he is doing and he is meeting no effective American or European resistance.

Varney asked the former U.N. Ambassador if he agreed that the reason the world is in such a mess is because the “[United States is] not a force in the world any longer” and because our President has “withdrawn from the game.” Bolton answered:

I think that’s a large measure of it. Look, what minimal international order and stability there’s been since the end of World War II has been because of American strength, the projection of our power, our system of alliances around the world. So, international trade, finance, travel, you name it, didn’t get there by accident. And if the United States pulls back, you’re going to have anarchy increasing. You can see that in the Middle East most visibly today, but signs of it exist everywhere.